behind it. By this time the day was up; the sun was glowing on the
red of the cranberry shrubs and the blue of the bilberry-boughs;
he was hungry and thirsty and tired. But he did not give in for
that; he held on steadily; he knew that there was near, somewhere
near, a great city that the people called Sprugg, and thither he
had resolved to go. By noontide he had walked eight miles, and
came to a green place where men were shooting at targets, the tall
thick grass all around them; and a little way farther off was a
train of people chanting and bearing crosses and dressed in long
flowing robes.

The place was the Hottinger Au, and the day was Saturday, and the
village was making ready to perform a miracle play on the morrow.

Findelkind ran to the robed singing-folk, quite sure that he saw
the people of God. "Oh, take me, take me!" he cried to them; "do
take me with you to do heaven's work."

But they pushed him aside for a crazy little boy that spoiled
their rehearsing.

"It is only for Hotting folk," said a lad older than himself. "Get
out of the way with you, Liebchen." And the man who earned the
cross knocked him with force on the head, by mere accident; but
Findelkind thought he had meant it.

Were people so much kinder five centuries before, he wondered, and
felt sad as the many-colored robes swept on through the grass, and
the crack of the rifles sounded sharply through the music of the
chanting voices. He went on footsore and sorrowful, thinking of